ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: GSunday, June 23, 1996 TAG: 9606240154
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newsday
The Internet is about to shrink.
For perhaps the first time in the 27-year history of the vast computer network, Monday will see a culling of 25,000 domain names, the heart of an Internet address. The Internet's landlord, InterNIC, is fed up with asking people to pay their annual rent, so their domain names will disappear from the Internet's ``White Pages,'' making them almost impossible to find.
``These are people we had sent several invoices to and we e-mailed them to let them know,'' said Leslie Hunter, a spokeswoman for a Herndon, Va., company, SAIC Network Solutions Inc., which the government contracts to oversee the InterNIC, the government body that controls the Internet's addresses. ``We haven't heard back from any of them.''
The tardy tenants, if they still care about their sites, will find that their home pages have all but disappeared from public view Monday. Visitors to the sites will find only the message that Websurfers dread: ``The server does not have a DNS entry. Check the server name in the location (URL) and try again.''
Network Solutions will make everything better again for the cyber squatters by restoring their domain names in a day if they come up with the $100 registration fee and, if they've been on the Internet more than two years, a $50 annual rent fee. But they only have 60 days to send in the check. After that, Network Solutions will tear up the lease, and the name will be up for grabs again.
Part of the problem for Network Solutions is that registering domain names used to be a free service offered by the National Science Foundation. The company started charging fees only last year.
LENGTH: Short : 39 linesby CNB